I’ve been planning on replacing my QNAP NAS with one from Synology for a few months now. And I also have been recommending them to clients for years now. But I am rethinking both of those based on this story from Tom’s Hardware:
Synology’s new Plus Series NAS systems, designed for small and medium enterprises and advanced home users, can no longer use non-Synology or non-certified hard drives and get the full feature set of their device. Instead, Synology customers will have to use the company’s self-branded hard drives. While you can still use non-supported drives for storage, Hardwareluxx [machine translated] reports that you’ll lose several critical functions, including estimated hard drive health reports, volume-wide deduplication, lifespan analyses, and automatic firmware updates. The company also restricts storage pools and provides limited or zero support for third-party drives.
For reference, precious few companies make hard drives, and Synology is not one of them. As such, a self-branded hard drive is merely a drive from a major vendor, like Seagate, Toshiba, or Western Digital, that gets a new sticker slapped on it alongside a potential custom firmware that serves as a sort of DRM, unlocking the correct functionality from the host device (in this case, a NAS).
The 2024 Synology models and older are not affected by this change. Still, those upgrading to or purchasing the latest Plus Series device, set to be released this year, will have to buy their drives directly from Synology or its certified suppliers to maximize their system. Because of this, you won’t be able to pick from the best hard drives if you get Synology’s latest Plus Series NAS Systems.
Is this about providing the best user experience? Or is this really about taking more money out of users pockets? I can argue this both ways as hard drives compatibility with NAS products can be really fiddly and troublesome at times. So going this route, this solves this problem as Synology has total control. Then there’s the fact that when it comes to issues with NAS products, consumers blame the NAS and not the hard drive company. By going this route, that problem is removed.
But at the same time I have to wonder if this is a way for Synology to line its pockets with cash. I say that because companies like QNAP aren’t going this route. So one has to wonder how much of a problem this really is. I’ve never had an issue with any NAS that I’ve built for myself or for a customer. But I am a small sample size relative to the broader market. Thus it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
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This entry was posted on April 17, 2025 at 11:17 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Synology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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Synology partially drops support for third-party drives in their new NAS offerings
I’ve been planning on replacing my QNAP NAS with one from Synology for a few months now. And I also have been recommending them to clients for years now. But I am rethinking both of those based on this story from Tom’s Hardware:
Synology’s new Plus Series NAS systems, designed for small and medium enterprises and advanced home users, can no longer use non-Synology or non-certified hard drives and get the full feature set of their device. Instead, Synology customers will have to use the company’s self-branded hard drives. While you can still use non-supported drives for storage, Hardwareluxx [machine translated] reports that you’ll lose several critical functions, including estimated hard drive health reports, volume-wide deduplication, lifespan analyses, and automatic firmware updates. The company also restricts storage pools and provides limited or zero support for third-party drives.
For reference, precious few companies make hard drives, and Synology is not one of them. As such, a self-branded hard drive is merely a drive from a major vendor, like Seagate, Toshiba, or Western Digital, that gets a new sticker slapped on it alongside a potential custom firmware that serves as a sort of DRM, unlocking the correct functionality from the host device (in this case, a NAS).
The 2024 Synology models and older are not affected by this change. Still, those upgrading to or purchasing the latest Plus Series device, set to be released this year, will have to buy their drives directly from Synology or its certified suppliers to maximize their system. Because of this, you won’t be able to pick from the best hard drives if you get Synology’s latest Plus Series NAS Systems.
Is this about providing the best user experience? Or is this really about taking more money out of users pockets? I can argue this both ways as hard drives compatibility with NAS products can be really fiddly and troublesome at times. So going this route, this solves this problem as Synology has total control. Then there’s the fact that when it comes to issues with NAS products, consumers blame the NAS and not the hard drive company. By going this route, that problem is removed.
But at the same time I have to wonder if this is a way for Synology to line its pockets with cash. I say that because companies like QNAP aren’t going this route. So one has to wonder how much of a problem this really is. I’ve never had an issue with any NAS that I’ve built for myself or for a customer. But I am a small sample size relative to the broader market. Thus it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
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This entry was posted on April 17, 2025 at 11:17 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Synology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.